I have a 180GB Corsair SSD (model# CSSD-F180GB2-BRKT) as the primary drive in a Windows laptop. Recently the machine became unbootable after installing Windows updates. Windows installed updates before the machine shut down and the next time the machine boot up it complained about not being able to find a bootable device. After finding fixmbr unsuccessful at making the machine bootable, I investigated a little within knoppix.

Fdisk revealed an empty partition table. A scan by Testdisk came up empty. And finally 'hd /dev/sda' reveals all zeros. And just in case someone were inclined to ask: I am certain of the block device I am looking at.

Creating a primary partition spanning the whole disk completes successfully, but after a reboot the disk appears empty again. dmesg reveals no read or write errors.

smartctl indicates that the drive is healthy- although the SMART attribute values do not appear to be read properly. "Data Page | WARNING: PREVIOUS ATTRIBUTE HAS TWO" and "Threshold Page | INCONSISTENT IDENTITIES IN THE DATA" messages appear within the table of values.

I don't have much experience with SSDs. Is this drive dead or something? Can anyone recommend any diagnostic tools that may be suited for diagnosing SSDs?

Update: I have also booted the machine using a Partition Magic disk and the device / partition table also appears blank.

2nd Update: Behavior of the drive is identical in a second machine with a different controller.